Well it would seem that I have spent most of the last two days driving - which can be quite an experience in NZ. One of the things that you need to be aware of over here is that the standard of the roads is nothing like that of the UK. They have State Highways which are the major roads and at best are of about the standard of a B road in the UK. You then get interest activities such as road works where they just dig up the whole road and you are left with driving over rubble! Then you have landslides which can have the effect of reducing/removing the hard shoulder, blocking one carriageway or blocking the whole road so they create a diversionary road that is all hardcore - interesting. If that is not enough then you have the fact that a large number of the roads are going up and down the mountains.
Anyway yesterday, Friday, we moved on to Hicks Bay - this as I said is the Eastern most point of NZ and is about as remote can be. We knew that there was only one motel there so we had to make sure that we were booked in. Now the bit that I had not picked up on was "60's retro" - or rather it was built in the 60's and has had nothing done to it since!
The one redeeming feature was the view from the decking at the back. Anyway to cut a long story short we decided that we could not cope with two nights there so today, Saturday, we moved on to Gisborne a day early.
As we are now here for three nights I will post some more details later.